In his new book, former Gov. Jesse Ventura makes this startling revelation: “Like more and more guys, I experience electile dysfunction. That’s defined as ‘the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2012 election year.’ ”

OK, so maybe it isn’t all that startling. After all, Ventura has been railing against the Democrats and Republicans since he got into the political commentary business more than 20 years ago.

But in his book, “DemoCRIPS and ReBLOODlicans: No More Gangs in Government,” he steps it up a notch, equating the parties to two Southern California street gangs, the Crips and Bloods.

He writes that the current state of American politics resembles gangland warfare. The Democrats and Republicans protect their turf, require members to pay dues and are run by party hierarchies. And he contends they’re stealing our country.

“They’ve created a system based upon bribery. Today, Wall Street owns our politicians, no matter which party (gang) it is — their allegiance is to the corporations and big business,” he wrote.

Actually, the two parties are “worse than the street gangs because they affect the whole country,” he said in an interview Monday, June 11, the book’s scheduled release date.

It was vintage Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Since his days as governor more than a decade ago, the former Navy SEAL, pro wrestler, movie actor and radio and television celebrity has made waves by bad-mouthing the campaign contributions, lobbyists and political parties that he says manipulate elections, bribe elected officials and steal government from average Americans.

He hinted he may be tiring of the fight.

“This may be my last time,” he said Monday. “I’ve written five New York Times best sellers. The last four have all been critical of the government. I’ve warned everybody.

“If they’re not going to listen, well, you get tired of pounding your head against the wall.”

Ventura devotes most of his book — written with Dick Russell, who collaborated with him on three previous books — to documenting how the rich game the system by bribing politicians to make themselves richer and the poor poorer.

Oil companies, banks, military contractors, pharmaceutical and insurance giants are the true masters of the political system, he argues. You’re out of luck “if you can’t lug a bag of cash down K Street,” the home of the big Washington lobbying firms.

The former governor has changed his mind about one political issue: third parties. He became governor because of the Reform (later Independence) Party movement and later championed its causes. But now he’s given up on third parties.

“It became apparent to me that the only way a third party is going to survive is they have to corrupt themselves also, because the mainstream media won’t give them a chance because they’re beholden to the two parties and the two-party system,” he said in the interview.

“So if a third party is going to survive, they have to take the bribes — they call them campaign donations, but it’s bribery. They would have to get down in the mud with the pigs. They would become just as corrupt.

“We already have a two-headed monster,” he continued. “Why would we need a three-headed one?”

That’s what happed to the tea party, he wrote. Initially it was a good idea, focusing on following the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

“The trouble is, supporters of the tea party are — whether they’re aware of it or not — snorting Koch,” he wrote. Right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch have become the “financial engine of the Tea Party” and co-opted its agenda.

In Congress, he wrote, members of the Tea Party Caucus have raked in millions in campaign contributions from the same big corporations that bribe establishment Democrats and Republicans.

He’s more excited about the Occupy Wall Street movement. The mainstream media have falsely portrayed them as a bunch of hippies and socialists, he said, but what they really want is for “Wall Street to stop bribing politicians,” he said.

Ventura’s solution is a “NO PARTY system.” Parties could still exist, he said, but he would stop putting party affiliations next to names on the ballot, making all elections nonpartisan.

That way, he said, voters would be responsible for learning who the candidates are and what they stand for and not rely on “ridiculous stereotypes” about the two parties.

The one exception to his indictment of politicians is Ron Paul, the libertarian Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate. He said Paul would follow the Constitution, change the country’s direction, back states’ rights and “shock the status quo.”

“I might even consider joining him on the ticket, if he asked me to,” he wrote.

But he acknowledged in the interview he hasn’t talked to Paul since 2008, when the two of them spoke at an alternative rally for Paul at Target Center in Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

So far, Ventura said, he’s scheduled only two book signings for his latest work, one Monday night, June 18, at the Barnes & Noble Rochester and another June 21 at the Roseville Barnes & Noble.

He said he thinks his book won’t get the attention it deserves because there’s a mainstream media conspiracy against him.

“If you write controversial books like I do,” he said, “the media will not give you the coverage that you should get because, of course, the media is all owned by the corporations, and the corporations are who run the government.”

Bill Salisbury has been a newspaper reporter since 1971. He started covering the Minnesota Capitol for the Rochester Post-Bulletin in 1975, joined the Pioneer Press as a general assignment reporter in 1977 and was assigned to the Capitol bureau in 1978. He was the paper's Washington correspondent from 1994 through 1999, when he returned to the Capitol bureau. Although he retired in January 2015, he continues to work at the Capitol part time.

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